Blackfeather Woods That's a dance I want to see

He sighs at the blockade his brother's stoicism presents; his presence welcomed like any stranger would be. "Nowhere is somewhere." At least, it is within the depths of Blackfeather Woods. Vaati doesn't know the boy, not really. The threat of war and the matter of making sure that his siblings and all the other dwellers of the dark forest still have a home captures most of his time, energy and focus. If it could be any other way, the yearling would not mind at all. But the task of upholding the woods is time-consuming and ungenerous; eating up the last few months of his childhood and spitting out a man grown up too soon.

It is a curse, really. A curse that no one else within Meldresi's legacy had been willing to take on -- thrust upon him and then shamed for it. He knows what the others whisper in the dark; how he is too young, unfit and incapable of leading the woods like his predecessors had. Except those who came before him had not filled their ranks at record time, had not formed alliances and made their mark on the world as they knew it, all within a few months. Vaati would not be mistaken as a pretender, a teen with a head filled only with arrogance. And he certainly would not be called a distant brother with no reason to his absenteeism, not like how Damien and Cicero had been to him. Not how he figures Euron and Ramsay see him; like he does not care.

"What do you want to be?" He wonders aloud; seeking to know his brother better, his aspirations and goals, in the time that he still could. "Your role within the dark woods as you grow older -- what do you want it to be?"